NGO's campaign to empower city Mayors came up in LS

To give a boost to city governancebenchmarking, a campaign taken out by city-based NGO Janaagraha,Parliament member Shashi Tharoor has introduced a private memberbill aimed at empowering City Majors and Municipalities in therecently concluded monsoon session of the Lok Sabha.

Janaagraha had made substantive contributions as the principalknowledge partner in this campaign.

Annual Survey of India's City-Systems (ASICS), the NGO's flagshipinitiative on city governance benchmarking, got a shot in the arm asit was cited in the Lok Sabha in an unstarred question raised by MrV Panneer Selvam, Member of Parliament from Salem.

Swachhata app, the official mobile app of the Swachh BharatMission, developed by Janaagraha's 'I Change My City' team waslaunched earlier this month in New Delhi by UnionMinister for Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu, a press statement issued by the NGO today said.

''We believe that the introduction of the private member billwill stimulate much needed public discourse on the urgent need forempowering our city mayors and municipalities,'' Mr SrikanthViswanathan, Co-ordinator - Advocacy and Reforms of Janagraha said.

Dr Tharoor had made a commitment at our annual conclave held inMarch this year on introducing a private member bill with knowledgesupport from Janaagraha.

ASICS 2015 makes the case that having a directly elected mayor initself will not be sufficient to solve the systemic issues thatplague our cities.

The recommendations made by the NGO for the bill includedprovisions for parastatals to report to the Mayor, for powers of theMayor over the municipality's finances and staffing, for mandatorytime-bound devolution of the 18 functions listed under Schedule XIIof the constitution, for constitution of Ward Committees and AreaSabhas as formal platforms of citizen participation and mandatorytime-bound constitution of Metropolitan Planning Committee to beheaded by the Mayor.UNI RS MSP CS 1310